An encounter frequency account of how experience affects likelihood estimation
Open accessAbstract
When making judgments, people often favor information received from a few individual sources over large-sample statistical data. Individual information is usually acquired piece by piece, whereas statistical information combines many observations into a single summary. We examined whether this difference in the frequency of encounters affects how data are weighted. In two experiments, subjects read statistical information indicating an event to be rare and contrasting information from individual cases suggesting the event to be common. We controlled whether the individual cases were summarized into a single summary like statistical information, or presented serially, case by case. Subjects' estimates of event frequencies were higher when the individual cases were presented in serial, rather than summarized, format. A third study demonstrated that subjects treat each data sample as an instance, and do not weight according to sample size. These results support the conclusion that people weight information according to encounter frequency.
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Obrecht, Chapman, and Gelman (2009) found no relation between CRT performance and the degree of encounter frequency bias.
“In contrast, Obrecht, Chapman, and Gelman (2009) found no relation between CRT performance and the degree of encounter frequency bias.”
From The Cognitive Reflection Test as a predictor of performance on heuristics-and-biases tasks (2011) · cites this paper as Obrecht, Chapman, and Gelman (2009)
Obrecht, Chapman, and Gelman (2009) observed a correlation of .45 between performance on the CRT and SAT quantitative scores.
“Obrecht, Chapman, and Gelman (2009) observed a correlation of .45 between performance on the CRT and SAT quantitative scores”
From The Cognitive Reflection Test as a predictor of performance on heuristics-and-biases tasks (2011) · cites this paper as Obrecht, Chapman, and Gelman (2009)
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Obrecht, N. A., Chapman, G. B., & Gelman, R.
- Affiliations
- Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (US)
- Corresponding author
- Obrecht, Natalie A.
- Venue
- Memory & Cognition
- Published
- 2009-07
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 632-643
- ISSN
- 0090-502X (ISSN-L)
- 1532-5946
- OpenAlex
- W1983357294
- Cited by
- 54
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 1.63
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Memory & Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Categorization, perception, and language
- Keywords
- encounter rate, likelihood estimation, statistical data, sample size, data weighting, frequency judgment, rare events, summary statistics
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Judgment, Persuasive Communication, Probability Learning, Problem Solving, Reading, Likelihood Functions, Comprehension, Uncertainty
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